Power of Place - Stories of the Pacific Northwest
Power of Place Episode #65 | The Calligrapher’s Stone - Lihuang Wung & Gregory Youtz
Not everything can be found. Some things were made to disappear. In 1885, Tacoma forcibly expelled its Chinese community in what became known as the Tacoma Method. Families were marched from their homes, put on trains and told never to return. Businesses were left behind, looted and burned. Little Canton disappeared. Many of those who were expelled rebuilt their lives elsewhere, but Tacoma’s Chinese community was never re-established. What remains is not a street or a district, but a question. In this episode, you move across Tacoma’s working waterfront, through tideflats where a community once stood and toward the Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park, a place shaped by landscape, absence and the deliberate act of remembering. Lihuang Wung, the urban planner who helped shape the park after first becoming involved through calligraphy, guides you through the space where design, memory and landscape meet. Gregory Youtz carries the story into music through collaboration with Chinese American artists and rigorous historical research. Alicia Valentino of Psomas draws you beneath the surface into the layered tideflats, where traces of what once stood may still remain. “A character engraved on a plaque or a piece of rock is not enough. We want a place of power.” ~ Lihuang Wung . , , . , . .
